'But the global church-Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox together-is present in more than a million distribution plants worldwide. For food, shelter, vaccines, relief supplies, and helping hands, there's a local church on the ground wherever disaster strikes. And we're ready to help you.'
'I am sure you are, Sister Serghetti, but we can take care of our own people,' said the Chinese ambassador, and further discussion was tabled.
As Serena returned to her seat, she could think of at least one other person who would beg to differ: Conrad Yeats. She had left him for the work of the Church, the very hope of the world she was proclaiming in this chamber. But in Conrad's mind it was the Church that had denied him her love.
She picked up her bulky but lightweight white earpiece and sat down. Most delegates needed translators from the interpreter booths overhead to follow along. But not Serena, who was fluent in many of the world's languages. She used the earpiece to pick up messages unobtrusively and write them down. Now a voice in Italian told her that the media room said that 'Carlton Yardley' from The New Atlantis magazine was there for his scheduled interview with her.
Her heart skipped a beat.
He must have found something, she thought, although she was embarrassed to realize she didn't care if he had nothing to show her but his face. His unshaven, stubbled face.
As soon as she could step outside the chamber and into the crowded visitors' lobby, Serena pulled out her iPhone and called Benito to bring the car out from the private garage. She scanned the cavernous glass atrium. The media line was at the entrance, behind the blue velvet rope. She started walking in that direction when Max Seavers stepped into view, blocking her path to Conrad.
'Serena!' Max said, smiling.
Serena stopped in her tracks.
Before he was tapped by the American president to help with the Department of Defense, Max Seavers had helped her humanitarian efforts in Africa and Asia on a number of occasions by donating vaccines. She couldn't just blow him off now.
'Deja vu, Max. Weren't we standing here just a few days ago with you showing me some rather unusual photographs? What brings you back?'
'Sounding the alarm here and on Capitol Hill about the coming flu pandemic. What about you? I hear you were telling the Chinese where to stick their new dam.'
Serena couldn't help glancing over his shoulder toward the media line, where various cameras were set up to catch the comings and goings of dignitaries. She spotted Conrad, and he saw her and motioned.
'I suppose you have an opinion on the new Beijing?' she said as she started walking away from the entrance and toward the delegates lounge.
'A technological marvel,' Max said, keeping pace with her. 'You've got to give the Chinese credit for that. They've left nothing to chance. Even the date of the opening ceremonies on August eighth was chosen because the number 8 represents good fortune to the Chinese.'
'I see: That's the eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year of the new millennium,' Serena said, pretending to marvel. 'And I used to think three sixes in a row was the devil's number. Tell me, Max, what about the million souls the Olympics are displacing?'
'You mean driving from their homes which had no running water or electricity in the first place?' he said. 'Sounds like progress to me.'
Serena glanced sideways at him as she walked. 'And the destruction of the ancient temples, their history?'
'Obviously the Chinese don't care about their ancient temples as much as you do, Serena. That's because the Chinese are looking to the future. They know that in time some other civilization is going to do the same thing to their Olympic Park that they're doing to those ancient temples.'
She came to a halt. 'I wonder if you'd feel the same way if these temples were the ones about to be destroyed?' She pointed out toward the Manhattan skyline-away from Conrad in the media area.
Max Seavers followed her finger and smiled. 'If it was some act of God-like the tsunami, I'd be devastated. But if it was our government doing the submerging, for the betterment of the country, like the Chinese, then yes. Have you seen this?'
Serena realized he was referring to the nearby display of a model city in the lobby. It was the official Olympic Venue Construction Plan for Beijing. A nameplate read 'Axis of Human Civilization.' More PR.
'Impressive, Serena, isn't it?'
Serena looked at the model of the city's new Central Axis. The Chinese had successfully constructed a 25- kilometer-long boulevard connecting the new Olympic Park in the north with the Imperial Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square in the city center. She noted a stretch of avenue labeled 'thousand-year path.'
'It's certainly audacious, Max,' she said. 'This Beijing axis looks like the New Berlin that Hitler never got to build.'
Max chuckled. 'Funny you should say that. Because it was designed by Albert Speer Jr., the son of the architect who designed the New Berlin for Hitler's grandiose empire, the 'world capital Germania,' the capital of the so-called Thousand Year Reich.'
Serena said, 'You're joking.'
'No.' Max shook his head. 'Charming old man, incredibly gifted. Tried to hire him myself for SeaGen's corporate headquarters in La Jolla, but the Chinese outbid me.'
Serena stared at the model city. 'Is Speer trying to copy his father or outdo him?'
'That's what the German news magazine Die Welt asked when the plan was unveiled,' he said. 'But it's all nonsense, of course. The Chinese insist Speer's design simply fulfills their own intentions of creating a central axis, and that the idea was laid out in the planning of the imperial capital centuries ago. I think the real point of interest is where the elder Speer found his inspiration for the New Berlin in the first place.'
Serena shrugged. 'You've got me, Max.'
'Pierre L'Enfant's design for the National Mall in Washington, D.C.,' he said. 'What's more, Speer maintained that L'Enfant's plan was itself based on earlier source maps going back to ancient Egypt and Atlantis. That's Doctor Yeats's specialty, isn't it?'
Serena wasn't going to bite. Nothing good could come out of lingering here even a moment longer.
'Atlantis?' she asked, giving him a dubious look. 'Now don't get all mystic on me, Max. We need you to keep those vaccines coming.'
With that she turned and briskly walked away, exhaling slowly. As she approached the media line by the entrance, she was aware of Conrad in the pack. She walked right past him without a glance to the waiting limousine and got in. Benito closed the door, slid behind the wheel and drove away.
8
FURIOUS TO SEE Serena pressing the flesh with none other than that pseudo-philanthropist-billionaire Max Seavers, and feeling helpless because he couldn't risk being seen, Conrad walked out of the U.N., weaving between the flagpoles in front until he was far enough away to hail a cab and climb inside.
'Christie's,' he said as the driver pulled away from the curb and into the lunch hour traffic. The driver glanced at him in the mirror and asked where Christie lived. 'Rockefeller Center. She's an auction house.'
Conrad didn't know where else to go until he could reach Serena, and he didn't want to tell the driver to just 'drive.' Worst case, there was a cute assistant curator at Christie's that he had seen off and on whenever he was in New York. Ironically enough, her name was Kristy. Maybe she could make some sense of the map, or at least its monetary value, and refer him to somebody outside the federal government who could help him decode the text.
Conrad took out the cell phone he had lifted off the body of the assassin aboard the Acela. He had tossed his own phone under the tracks before leaving the platform at Penn Station. The question was whether anybody had found the bodies yet and been sharp enough to start tracking this phone. Probably not. Hopefully not.
He keyed in Serena's number from memory and listened to it ring on the other end.
